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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26672539">Taxonomy</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Glowstar826'>Glowstar826 (orphan_account)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Angst, F/M, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Sad, Unrequited Love</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 13:00:23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,040</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26672539</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Glowstar826</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"You're just like your plants, Black." He leaned over a scribbled wooden crate and sighed. "I can't live like you. I don't want to live like you."</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Remus Lupin/Severus Snape, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Taxonomy</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">


        <li>
            A translation of

            <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26646850">טקסונומיה</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Areola/pseuds/Areola">Areola</a>.
        </li>

    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Rare ornamental flowers and orchids had grown in the Blacks’ solarium. Sirius' mother had forbidden him from approaching them (she forbade him to approach countless other things; he remembered the house in Grimmauld Place as a huge and untouchable fancy porcelain shop) and Sirius—with an instinct he always had for everything green and vegetative—knew that Walburga's plants would wither immediately if he took them out of the sun room.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Cacti also needed heat and dryness. Like a beating heart, imprisoned in a cage of flesh and bones. Some plants, Sirius knew, could only grow inside the sterile environment of the greenhouse. Remus had asked him when they were both young why he loved those thorny plants, and Sirius hadn’t known what to say. Only that it seemed right to him—to wrap what you like in layers of glass and heat and dryness. Maybe they reflected something of him, the fact that he preferred to sneak out of the house at three in the morning and wait in the cold in London for a train that would take him away from everything Sirius ever knew—and then stab other people, because Sirius knew no other way. They were just a reincarnation of wild plants, all evolutionary processes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Snape seemed to know this. They didn’t speak much at Oxford (in general, Remus Lupin was the only thing that interested Sirius in the Molecular Physics Department), but he was brilliant, he was annoying, and he was Remus' previous lover. He and Rem (who barely lived on his scholarship) once sat in his dorm room. Rem had leaned over to rummage in the dresser to get the lubricant out, and against the drawer walls rolled Paul Celan's "rim grille." Sirius had frowned because the Holocaust poets were not really Remus' thing (poets were not his thing at all; Remus had preferred to listen to the Beatles and he had tried to take Sirius to college choir recitals), and Rem just grabbed his wrist and said, "This is Severus’s. I was looking for it. I'll tell him I found it."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Of course Remus—like all the good things in Sirius' life—stayed in the past. Rem couldn’t stand his living conditions, and he couldn’t stand the heat and the dryness and the thorns. "You're just like your plants, Black." He leaned over a scribbled wooden crate and sighed. "I can’t live like you. I don’t want to live like you." Remus finally closed the box. "I don’t want them to be burned."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Snape seemed to haunt Sirius as a hollow-cheeked memory, somewhat like schizophrenia. Sirius tried not to think about it, but his pale face, overly thin hands and frozen voice all reminded him of things he despised. There were cacti that grew below zero degrees, but they all needed dryness and it reminded him of an oily, slippery Snape. Sirius remembered the night he ran away from home. The rain had fallen in dense barrages on the ground, and it seemed to him that he was noble under the weight of memories (blood flooded his right eye, and he swore he would never cry again). The rain had overwhelmed him, pressed his clothes to his skin, and only in the light and warmth of the Potter family house could it bloom again. James had hugged him, ran his fingers through his hair and assured him that everything would be fine (they did not talk about that night again, even though nothing really happened). He remembered himself crawling under the blankets, alone, and the heat was almost awful. Almost feverish. Sirius almost felt alive—again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Oxford had not changed in years. Sirius stood at the top of Tom's Tower, watching Tom Quad, chilled and silver from frost on that October morning, and he felt the blood thinning in his veins, slowly turning into water. He was thirty-four years old and he was slowly dying. Not from illness, not from love—maybe from memories, but he wasn’t sure.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He drank a lot. The whiskey made him feel hot—part of an ongoing process of photosynthesis. Sugar flowed in his veins, and he walked like a cloud of sugar and oxygen—transparent and invisible—through the streets of Oxford. One night, darkening his face to his cup of chivas, he stumbled upon Snape cradling a glass of malt and looking as gloomy and nasty as ever. Sirius had been about to get up just as Snape had sat down right next to him, gently placing the glass as if carefully memorizing his moves.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Get out of here, Snape."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The other professor raised an eyebrow.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Lupin is not going to come back, Black." Snape picked up his Glenfiddich.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Go to hell."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Snape just took large gulps of his drink in rapid succession. "There's not enough room for both of us." </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It took him almost a year to settle his affairs at Oxford. At least that's what Sirius told himself as soon as he got on the plane to Kennedy, and from there, to Buenos Aires, the land of fire. There were suitcases that Sirius hadn’t even opened in his three years at Oxford, and he never moved on the roads with heavy equipment. All Sirius had to do was make the decision to leave. Maybe Snape was right. Sirius had kept waiting for the twenty-one-year-old Rem to change his mind, to put his crate on the floor, and to pull him to his body. Then, they’d go on to make love until dawn. It didn’t happen, though, and Sirius returned to Patagonia, to the whales whining at each other beneath the sea, and to the cacti that towered, high and proud, above the sands.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He knew that no one would be able to follow him to the blind sands and the scorching sun. That no one would share with him the fresh water in the watering can, or run his fingers over the beautiful plants and admire them. That was fine—cacti didn’t need to talk to survive. No water. No fertilizer. No dirt. Remus had known that. Now Sirius knew, too. Sometimes, though, in his dreams, he’d see gray eyes and feel white hands caressing his body in the darkness of the desert night.</span>
</p>
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